Random emails by Russian women?

by Melissa
(Tennessee )

My husband has Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube but that's it. He's not on a dating site of any kind. I've checked. Yet once in a while he gets these emails in his spam folder claiming to be a women from overseas and sends a vague but very long email of how she wants to find a man to love and start a family with. She says she found his info through a dating agency but never specifies which one. When I reply to them asking which one, they never answer my question. How do these women email him if he doesn't put his email on any website publicly?

Bob's Answer:

Of course if one IS on a dating site, especially a dating site that deals with international connections, then they're likely to see these kinds of things. But that's not the only way for it to happen.

Does your husband's spam filter ever trap those messages like "Cheap V1@gr a!"? Where do those senders get his email address?

Probably some time in the last 20 years (or however long your husband has had his email address) your husband filled out an online form for something. Maybe it was a bogus prize drawing, or a newsletter subscription. That may have been purely a front to harvest email addresses. Or, maybe it was legit, but later the list was sold, or hacked. Identifying where a spammer/scammer got your email address is like trying to identify the source of cockroaches.

Oh, and all those supposedly Russian women (it's not always really Russian, and not always a woman) always say "I saw you in the site" (or dating agency, etc.). And they never answer if you ask which site. Actually, most of the time they don't even read the question. They just note that you replied, then they send the next email in the sequence. It's almost automated.

You could say in the next message that you are in prison for axe murdering your family, and "she" will respond, "Thank you for your very nice letter... you seem a wonderful man... Let me tell you more about me..."

They won't start paying close attention to what you write until the sequence gets closer to the money punch line.